And when a period of forty years was fulfilled to him, it came into his heart to look upon his brethren, the sons of Israel;
Stephen is on trial before the council. He answers by retelling Israel's own history — the story of how God's people kept refusing the deliverers He sent. Here the story reaches a turning point. Moses, raised in Pharaoh's palace, reaches forty and looks toward the slaves he was taken from.
The number is not decoration. Stephen's speech splits Moses' life into three blocks of forty years. Some have claimed he invented numbers the books of Moses never give. One commentator does the arithmetic.
It is claimed that Acts 7:23, 30, 36 mentions three separate periods of forty years, and that only the last appears in the books of Moses. But turn to Exodus 7, and we are told that "Moses was eighty years old… when they spoke to Pharaoh" (v. 7). These eighty years agree exactly with Stephen's account. Moses was forty when it came into his heart to visit his brothers, and he spent forty years after that in Midian. Stephen makes the age of Moses one hundred and twenty years altogether. Deuteronomy 31:2 and 34:7 say he died at the age of one hundred and twenty. Now, where is there any discrepancy?
Nothing outside him pushed him toward it. The desire began in his own heart, and one writer says that is the right order.
Then he went out from the palace and looked at the burdens of his brothers among the brick-kilns (Exodus 2:11). This was the second stage in his life of devotion and single-heartedness, while he was still in Egypt and everything outside him was against him. "It came into his heart," we are told, to do this (Acts 7:23). And it is good, and the fruit is pleasant, when affection is the parent of service.
The word for "visit" means more than a friendly call. And forty years in a palace had not erased who his people were.
In all the forty years he had been moving in the court of Pharaoh, it now appears that he never forgot that those despised slaves were his brothers. One may imagine him looking round at the glitter of that court and at those who moved in it. In his heart he was thinking, "these are not my brothers."… We find that the word visit comes from the same root as the word for oversight. It seems as though he was already overseeing his own district, the future sphere of his service.
Moses could have kept his place as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He refused it. One commentator explains what led him out.
But divine providence is no guide for faith; nothing but the word is. Providence brought him in, and from there faith led him out. "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter… He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward" (Hebrews 11:24-26).
The visit was right. What came next was too early. One writer separates the zeal from the timing.
This was zeal for his brothers, but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come for judging Egypt and delivering Israel, and the intelligent servant will always wait for God's time. Moses "had grown up." He was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And further, "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." All this was true. Yet he ran ahead of the time, and when someone does this, failure must be the result.
Stephen is not giving a history lesson. He is showing the men in front of him that they have done again what their fathers did.
So Moses was an outcast for many long years. His own unworthy brothers drove him out as much as the angry king of Egypt did. They loved him less the more he loved them. They forgot the promised deliverance, and they set no value on the man who gave up everything for their sake. Israel denied the one who was in that day the type of the Holy and Righteous One. It was nothing new.
Where Moses went next matters too.
All of this is personal history. Yet Stephen plainly uses it as a type of Christ. When Christ presented Himself to His own people as their Deliverer, they rejected Him. Indeed, the flight of Moses into the land of Midian is a marked type of where our Lord stands now toward Israel and the world… But, like Moses, our Lord will return to deliver His people on earth, just as Moses returned from Midian and led Israel out.
- Heart — The move began inside him: "it came into his heart." Affection came first, and service was its fruit.
- Cost — Providence put Moses in the palace; faith took him out of it. He counted reproach with God's people as greater wealth than Egypt's treasures.
- Timing — The desire was right, the hand was early. God's servant waits for God's hour, and running ahead ends in failure.
- Refusal — The more he loved them, the less they loved him. The deep wound came from his own people, not from Egypt.
- Picture — Rejected, Moses withdrew to Midian and came back as deliverer. That is the pattern of Christ, and the pattern Stephen presses on his hearers.
and seeing a certain one wronged, he defended [him], and avenged him that was being oppressed, smiting the Egyptian.
Stephen is on trial for his life, and instead of defending himself he retells Israel's story. He stops at the day Moses, then forty, killed an Egyptian to save a Hebrew: was that faith or impatience, and why tell it to a court about to kill him?
Moses acted here for his own people, at his own cost. One commentator ties that action to what devotion to God actually looks like.
Holiness toward God always means separation from evil. It also means standing with His people, in heart and in the way you live. But now faith is tested, and its path never runs smooth for long. … Hating unrighteousness, he punished the oppressor of his brother. He took no thought of what it would cost him.
Stephen's words are warm: Moses defended the man and avenged him. But commentators differ over the deed itself. Some hold that the love behind it was beyond blame while the act was not, and they note how Scripture leaves it:
The Spirit could not blame the love that moved the hand of Moses. But neither could He justify the act. God has left it there, as He always knows how to do. He leaves what came from Himself to tell its own story. What did not come from Himself stands before the spiritual judgement of those who trust Him. Any other book would offer some kind of apology here, or even a long argument, to clear God of all share in what was far from His own holiness.
Another writer still calls it faith, while faulting the timing:
He had learned the wisdom of Egypt, but not yet the wisdom of God. He showed zeal for his brothers, but it was not according to knowledge. He attempted a deliverance before the time. Yet it was an action of faith.
Stephen had called Moses mighty in deeds. That very strength was the problem. One writer names whose plan was moving that day:
"Mighty in deeds," and acting for the people of God too — but acting in his own natural strength, not as one sent by God. That explains what followed. Moses was thinking about how Moses was going to deliver the people. … God had to teach him that He accepts service only in the power and strength that come from Himself, not in the strength or wisdom of Egypt.
The same writer contrasts this confident rescuer with a man who later knew what it means to be sent by God:
Before, when he went out in his own natural strength, the failure he met hit him hard. Now he has learned how small he is, and he says, "Who am I?" And it is always so. When a believer senses that God has sent him on a mission, he always feels the deepest humbling of spirit. God may bring this about through painful discipline of soul, but the aim of His training is to break down self-confidence.
This is why the story sits in Stephen's speech. The rescue was real, and the people refused it. His judges had just done the same on a far larger scale:
The people had no readiness of heart. They gave no generous response to the devotion that would have served them, and they saw nothing of the mind of God at all. They drove their appointed deliverer out among strangers. Israel was now doing the same to One who had come down from a far more wonderful height. God had borne witness to Him beyond anything ever given before, and He had come to bring a much mightier deliverance.
The sting is in where the rejection came from. Not from Egypt:
So too with Moses. The words that made him flee — "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" — came from one of his own brothers, not from an Egyptian. The rejection came from among his own people, not from outside. So it had been with Jesus too.
- Heart. The love that moved his hand was beyond blame, whatever is said of the blow.
- Hand. Commentators differ: some say the act could not be justified, others call it faith acting before the time. The strength on show was Egypt's, not God's.
- School. God breaks down self-confidence before He sends anyone. The bold rescuer became the man who asked, "Who am I?"
- Refusal. A real deliverer stood in front of them, and they saw nothing. The wound came from his own brother, not from the oppressor.
- Pattern. Stephen's judges were repeating what their fathers did — now against a far greater Deliverer, and against far greater proof.
For he thought that his brethren would understand that God by his hand was giving them deliverance. But they understood not.
Stephen is retelling Israel's story to men who are about to stone him. Here he pauses on a moment that failed. Moses acted for his brothers, and they missed who he was. The verse holds two things at once. Moses was sure God had chosen him. His people were too blind to see it.
His conviction rested on something God had made known to him.
God had sent conviction into Moses' heart both of sin and of righteousness. He saw how far Pharaoh's palace stood from the rest of God. He heard and understood the word of promise. God had made it known to him — we are not told how — that Israel was His people. He also made known that the day of their deliverance was near, and that He would keep His word of promise by Moses' own hand.
What Moses believed was true. But he acted before God's time, and that decided the outcome.
This was zeal for his brothers, but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come to judge Egypt and deliver Israel. The servant who understands God will always wait for God's time. Moses had grown up. He was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." All this was true. Yet he ran ahead of God's time, and when a man does that, failure must be the result.
The lesson God was teaching runs deeper than timing. It concerns the source of the strength a servant uses.
"Mighty in deeds," he acted for the people of God. But he acted in the energy of the flesh, not as one sent by God, and that explains what followed. Moses was thinking about how Moses would deliver the people... But no — "they did not understand." Moses had another lesson to learn. God had to teach him that He would be served only by the power and strength that come from Himself, not by the strength or wisdom of Egypt... When a person acts in the energy of the flesh, there is always disappointment and surprise when our efforts fail.
The failure was not only in the deliverer. Israel had lost the expectation God Himself had given them.
They had fallen, not only in their circumstances, but in their souls. Faith was at work in very few of them, so few expected a deliverer or valued a man who had faith in God. They were dark and dead toward God. They felt how hard men can be. The hope God had given to Israel had almost vanished from their souls. They expected no deliverance close at hand, yet they should have been looking for it. The fourth generation was already running its course. In that generation, as the Lord had said, this long-afflicted people were to leave a judged Egypt and come into the promised land again.
Stephen is not giving a history lesson. He holds a mirror up to the council in front of him. And he marks the one difference that makes their sin far worse.
His brothers, however, did not understand, because they did not share his faith. So they rejected him as their deliverer. They wanted to keep going their own wrong way... In Acts 7, God leads Stephen to make these points clear. He shows that when the Jews rejected the Lord Jesus, they were doing again what their fathers had done with Moses — but on a far more serious scale. In the Lord Jesus there was not the slightest element of imperfection. In Moses there was distinct failure. His desires were right: his action wrong.
Moses came twice. Commentators read the two visits as a shape that Israel's history is still following.
He left the palace and, perhaps, the throne, and came to his own to take up their cause. It all points to Him who left the glory and came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. When Moses came the first time to his brothers to deliver them, "they did not understand." But they understood when he came the second time. In the same way Israel will understand when He who is greater than Moses comes the second time.
- Understood — Moses' conviction was real. God had told him that deliverance would come by his hand. Being right about God's purpose is not the same as being right about God's timing.
- Unseeing — Israel's blindness was their own fault. God's own word had told them when to expect rescue, and they had stopped looking.
- Undone — work begun before God's time ends in failure and in "disappointment and surprise." Only strength that comes from God can serve God.
- Underlined — Stephen tells this failure for a reason. His hearers had repeated their fathers' sin against a Deliverer in whom there was no failure at all.
- Understood at last — Israel missed Moses the first time and understood him the second. Commentators see in that the hope still held out to Israel.